


Little More than a Head Cold

by rainbowchristy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Arguing, Fainting, Fluff, Gen, Illnesses, Light Angst, Protective Keith (Voltron), Sick Lance (Voltron), Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2020-10-05 09:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20486822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowchristy/pseuds/rainbowchristy
Summary: Langsty-mc-langstface (tumblr) Prompt: Lance loses his voice after a shooting match with Keith.At first everyone jokes about how nice it is to finally get some peace and quiet. However as time passes everyone starts to get jumpy and snapping at each other for no reason.It’s when Coran asks about Lance do they finally put the pieces together. They rush off to find him only to find Lance passed out in his room with a raging fever.It turns out that losing his voice wasn’t because he had been shouting but instead that little head cold he had ignored had developed into something much worse.





	Little More than a Head Cold

**Author's Note:**

> TW: None.

“Keith! What the hell were you thinking?!” Lance yelled, panicked.

“I did what I had to,” he replied, nonchalant. He continued past Lance and towards his bedroom, Lance following.

“No, you weren’t!” he continued, grabbing Keith’s shoulders to stop him from moving. Lance felt his voice begin to weaken. He’d been yelling in battle for about the past hour and his voice was finally giving in.

“I did what I thought was right for the team. You’re the one who’s always saying the end justifies the means. Besides, Shiro’s piloting the black lion now so you don’t need me,” he reasoned.

“Look, you can’t just go and self-distrust whenever you want. You're still part of Team Voltron and we still need you,” he said in what he hoped was a comforting voice. Yelling was too difficult to do now. Not that it mattered, he wasn’t mad anymore, just worried for Keith.

“Fine, whatever you want. Can I go now?” he begged like a teen that was told they couldn’t go to a party.

Lance nodded, feeling a tickle in his throat. He swallowed around it and took a sip of water from his bottle. His throat cleared as he changed into his swimmers before heading to the pool.

“Hey, Lance. Mind if I join you?” Matt asked as he lifted his shirt over his head.

Lance was laying back against the water with ears under the water but he still heard. “Not at all,” he tried to say, missing the familiar vibrations in his throat.

Changing his body weight so he was standing, he tried again, “N- all,” he choked out.

“You’ve been shouting too much,” Matt reasoned, stifling a laugh. “While we were all calm in battle, you were yelling your head off. This is what you get,” he joked, climbing into the pool with Lance.

While Matt clearly found the situation funny, Lance was more agitated. Talking was his favourite hobby. Well, more specifically, insulting Keith was his favourite hobby but how would he do that without his voice?

Lance stayed in the pool for about an hour before climbing out, going back to his room.

“Hi Lance,” Keith said, walking out of his room as Lance walked into his. As Lance waved and nodded, he didn’t miss Keith’s expression morph into one of confusion then happiness.

Lance quickly changed from his swimmers into the clothes he’d had on earlier and walked the castle’s hallways towards the dining room. Hunk was there, placing dinner plates on the placemats. Pidge and Matt were on the couch, talking about something sciencey that Lance didn’t understand. Shiro was talking to Allura about strategies and Keith was in a corner observing everyone. Coran wasn’t in the room yet, probably off keeping the castle in tip-top shape.

As Hunk placed the last dish, he called, “Dinner’s ready,” to everyone in the room, stopping all their conversations. Everyone wandered over and took their regular seats, Coran running in a few minutes later apologising for being late.

“This is really good, Hunk. What earth dish is this?” Allura questioned.

“They’re just Empanadas. I only just found replacements for all the ingredients I needed so I thought I’d try them out. Glad you like them,” Hunk smiled.

“You’re awfully quiet, Lance,” Shiro pointed out, “Anything up?”

Normally, Lance would have made a ‘the roof’ joke but he didn’t feel like he could talk. His throat was really sore. And why was Shiro yelling at him?

“He lost his voice from shouting at Keith too much,” Matt explained, shooting a smirk to Lance. They both knew he was yelling a lot during the battle but of course Matt wouldn’t mention that. Lance couldn’t even defend himself as Allura looked at him disappointedly.

“Lance, you will have to rest your voice for a little while. This isn’t bad enough to warrant a trip to the healing pods, so you will just have to rest,” Allura explained like a mother. “In the meantime,” she continued, now in a friendly tone, “we get to enjoy some peace and quiet.”

The rest of the dinner was spent in playful banter and light hearted conversation. Much to Lance’s disappointment, everyone seemed to be happier without his snarky remarks and awful puns.

Occasionally, someone asked him a question before remembering and apologising. After dinner, Coran had offered Lance a device that spoke his thoughts out loud but he’d quickly shut that idea down. Lance’s mind was for him alone, thank you very much.

Coran, thinking of the next best option, handed Lance a small pill. “Take this. When you mime out words, this will speak it for you.”

Lance shook his head vigorously. He had a thing against medication. He wasn’t sure why but he hated the idea of them. It’s like they tricked the body into feeling better. It was like magic and Lance didn’t trust them. What if he was given the wrong one? What if he had too many? What about all the side effects most drugs had?

“Ok, my boy. The only other option is the old fashioned pen and paper. Incredibly impractical but humans aren’t exactly the smartest species in the universe,” Coran explained, raising an eyebrow in question.

Lance thought about the three options before nodding for the pen and paper.

“If that’s what you want. Here you go,” he said, handing Lance a pen and notepad.

While Lance had the ability to write whatever he wanted, jokes and bad puns included, writing took time and by the time he’d finish, it was too late for his joke. After the first day, he gave up and resorted to only writing down things if it was important.

People stopped asking him questions but also began to bicker a little more. They began arguing about the smallest things.

“Shiro, that’s a stupid idea!” Keith complained, raising his voice a bit.

“It’s not. It’s call tactics. I don’t think you would have heard the word before,” Shiro replied sassily.

Lance sat on the seat, helpless to lift the tension. When Pidge entired the room and joined in on the argument, arguing her own ideas, Lance gave up and left the room. He walked the short distance back to his room but as he changed out of his training gear, he felt light-headed.

~~~~

The entire group, excluding Lance, were in the lounge arguing. They weren’t bickering about anything of any value which was probably the weirdest part of it. They were arguing over the best way to spend free time.

Usually, it was settled at ‘everyone has their own preferences’ but no one wanted to accept that answer this time.

There was a loud crash that came from down the hall which disrupted their arguing. Curiosity getting the better of them, the dissolved their argument and walked the hallway to where the crash sounded like it came from. Ending up outside Lance’s and Keith’s rooms, they exchanged worried looks before knocking on Lance’s door.

When there was no answer, panic began to build in their chests. Allura knocked again but was shoved out of the way by Keith who proceeded to try and force the door open.

The door eventually opened as Lance lifted his head from the ground. “W- on?” he spat out, coughing multiple times.

“Lance!” Keith cried, running over to his friend, followed by the other six members of Voltron. “He’s got a fever,” Keith stated, removing his hand from Lance’s forehead.

“He needs to get to a healing pod, now! Lance. Lance, stay with us,” Allura called worriedly but Lance was gone.

~~~~

When Lance woke up, he felt himself in a healing pod. He’d been in them before and they created a very strange yet comforting atmosphere. For Lance, the pod felt like home. He felt like he was surrounded by his brothers and sisters, mother and father.

“When’s he going to wake up?” Keith asked someone. His voice was muffled by the pod’s glass but Lance still knew it was him.

“Hopefully soon. The healing pod finished around four hours ago. He should have woken up then but didn’t,” another voice replied. They sounded like Allura but he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t pay much attention to everyone else’s tones and dialects.

The front of the healing pod fabricated away, revealing an incredibly sleepy Lance. He stumbled out of the pod, tripping and falling into Allura’s arms.

“Good to see you awake again,” she said, helping him stand.

“You too princess. I’ve missed that pretty face,” he flirted. She lifted him back to his feet and stepped away.

“Our Lance is back,” she joked. Keith, who had been waiting very impatiently, jumped on Lance, knocking him to the ground.

“Careful!” Allura scolded lightly from behind them, chuckling but also concerned.

Keith snuggled into Lance’s chest, not even caring how embarrassing it was.

“I missed you too, mullet,” Lance chuckled, trying to stand as Keith climbed off him.

“Sorry,” he whispered. Only now did Lance notice the vibrant blush that spread from his cheeks to neck.

“Lance, we discovered the cause of you losing your voice. It had nothing to do with your bickering. You had space flu which you must have been ignoring and it was quite severe when you passed out. We rushed you to the healing pods but they can only do so much. You will probably have symptoms of a regular Earth cold for a few days to a week until the disease is fully out of your system,” Allura explained, reading off the notes Coran had left for him.

“Why did you do that?!” Keith questioned, half annoyed, half scared.

“Why did I do what?”

“Ignore your illness?! If you knew you were sick, why didn’t you tell someone?”

“I didn’t know. I hit my head during our last battle with the Galra and I guessed the light-headedness was a result of that,” Lance tried to reason.

“That makes even less sense. If you were light-headed then you should have said something and Coran could have helped you before you passed out.” It was at this point that Shiro, Pidge, Hunk, Matt, Allura (who had left to collect everyone) and Coran walked into the room.

“Good to see you up and going,” Shiro commented, lightly hugging Lance as not to hurt him. Lance received hugs from all the others as well as ‘welcome back’s.

After lunch, Keith and Lance decided to go back to their respective rooms.

“How are you feeling?” Keith asked on the walk to their rooms.

“Alright. My head’s still a little sore but it’s not too bad. How are you?” he answered.

“Pretty good. I missed you while you were in the healing pod, though,” he replied.

“I missed you too. I wasn’t able to make fun of you and your mullet. See ya,” he joked, turning into his room as the approached their doors.

**Author's Note:**

> Please no last-season spoilers in the comments, I'll cry :'(


End file.
